Young workers (age 18 to 24 years old) in the United States are twice as likely as older colleagues to steal office supplies for home use without thinking it is wrong according to a April 2006 Spherion Workplace Snapshot survey. And all those missing paper clips and pens add up to more than $50 billion a year.

"A lot of people that steal don't consider it stealing. They just consider it taking things or that it's a fringe benefit," said John Case, head of Employeetheft.com, a security consulting firm based in Del Mar, California.

WORKPLACE THEFT

The types of cash, merchandise and property theft respondents most often admitted to were:

-Taking company supplies for personal use (35%)

-Taking merchandise or equipment (17%)

-Giving or receiving refunds for unpurchased items (7%)

-49 percent of the respondents admitted eating food without paying, many of the employees indicated that they were allowed to

-44 percent of the employees admitted engaging in some type of cash, merchandise or property theft

ABSENTEEISM AND TARDINESS

-42 percent of the respondents had come to work late without permission

-24 percent had left work early without authorization

-19 percent had abused sick days

-18 percent had been absent from work without good reason

-In total, 59 percent of the sample admitted to some type of "time theft." Nineteen percent reported that they committed some type of time theft at least once a month.

-Very few respondents (2.2%) reported spending more than 12 hours a week using their work computer to catch up on personal tasks (e.g., banking, shopping, vacation planning), with 18% spending at least one hour per week doing so. Approximately 50% indicated that they never used their work computer to catch up on personal tasks.

-Only .4% indicated spending more than 12 hours a week using their work computers to "take breaks" from their day (e.g., sending personal email, surfing the web, playing games). Nearly 17% spent at least one hour per week "taking breaks" while 46% reported never doing so. These latter two questions, combined,

(Source : Nonproductive Computer Use at Work: Results from the 2001 National Work Opinion Survey)

B.What is HIPET?

There is wide-spread concern about the honesty and integrity of employees.Most organizations have serious problems of pilferage, absenteeism, tardiness, employee disagreements that lead to violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and computer misuse.The annual loss from these counterproductive behaviors is estimated in the billions of dollars.There was a clear need for a brief assessment that could be used as part of the pre-employment screening process.HIPET (Honesty and Integrity Pre-Employment Tests) was developed to meet that need.

HIPETassesses six areas of potentially counterproductive behaviors by a self-descriptive inventory that taps six substantive areas of concern as well a Good Impression (validity) scale.

Hostility

Conscientiousness

Integrity

Substance Abuse

Sexual Harassment

Computer Misuse

HIPET is modular with four "core" scales and then three additional scales that can be added as needed.The core assessment is 80 true/false questions and if all the core scales are added, the assessment is 140 questions.The scores produce a HIPET profile which can then be compared to successful and less successful incumbents in a variety of jobs.

Developed in an English and Bahasa Indonesia -language version, this assessment takes only 10-12 minutes to complete.HIPET is a web-based system, but it can be given on paper if necessary (if given on paper, the responses would be entered into the scoring software in order to generating reports).

The HIPET Assessment provides three valuable reports for the user:

Interpretive Report:Describes the score in each scale and what it means.

Graph Report:A quick snapshot of the participant's scores and what level of concern they fall into.

Behavioral Interview Question Report:Follow-up questions based on which assessment items the participant answered in a "counter-productive" manner.